Why only 2 geniekin in rage of elements?

[agoak]

I'm starting pathfinder with 2e remastered, and it feels like I am being forced to buy legacy products in order to get heritages (or are they ancestries, that wasn't clear either) for the other 4 geniekin that I feel should have been included in rage of the elements.

[NoxiousMiasma]

All the pre-Remaster rules are available for free at the Archives of Nethys (2e.aonprd.com). The Remaster rules aren't a huge change, so I'd be suprised if they actually needed any adjustments, and AoN incorporates the errata anyway.

The Greek Classical Elements geniekin didn't get included because Rage of Elements was literally the first Remaster book and things were both very weird and moving very fast at the time. Presumably they'll get updated so they can be included in the new license at some point, but I'm not sure when.

[Finoan]

Agreed. Ifrit, Oread, Sylph, Undine, and Suli already existed in Ancestry Guide when Rage of Elements was created. There isn't much need to reprint them there.

And with Ancestry Guide being a Lost Omens book (mostly lore rather than game rules) there isn't much need to Remaster the entire book. The APs and Lost Omens books are 'Legacy' more because of publication date rather than because of any incompatibility or updating that they need.

Probably the biggest updating that they need would be with the Elemental Lore feat. It should give the Additional Lore feat for the associated elemental plane instead of just giving Trained proficiency - to match things like Elven Lore does for their ancestry lore skill. But even Ardande and Talos are needing that update from the look of things in AoN.

[agoak]

Unfortunately if my players are looking through the book or printed pdf "it's available on a website under the old system" isn't much use as a guideline, and "buy the legacy book, it's in there" is exactly the problem I have.
I do appreciate the explanation about it being the first remastered book though I am admittedly confused how there were licensing issues in transferring one Paizio book's contents into another Paizio book. Was the brand sold between versions or something?

[Finoan]

No, the licensing strangeness is because you can't retroactively reprint book pages. So the page announcing the game license that Ancestry Guide has, still has the OGL printed on it. Paizo could absolutely reprint Ancestry Guide (under the same name or a different name) and change the licensing page to the ORC license (as long as they removed any OGL-licensed content from it - all of the Paizo original content would be fine).

But just changing the license wouldn't make it a 'Remaster' book. Just like being published with the OGL license doesn't make something a 'Legacy' book (Rage of Elements is published with the OGL license).

Reprinting Ancestry Guide with the ORC license, and having that be the only change, would not update the Elemental Lore feat to use Additional Lore, for example. There would still be some work needed to fully say that the book's game rule content is 'Remaster'.

But that additional work may not be worth the cost of republishing.

So, the short answer that I am trying to give is that the Lost Omens line of books - even the Legacy ones - are Remaster enough to be worth buying even today. You wouldn't want to buy the "Core Rulebook" or the "Gamemastery Guide". Buy "Player Core", "Player Core 2", and "GM Core" instead. But that is because those are rule books, not lore books.

[exequiel759]

There's always Archives of Nethys as well.

[Nightwhisper]

agoak wrote:

I do appreciate the explanation about it being the first remastered book though I am admittedly confused how there were licensing issues in transferring one Paizio book's contents into another Paizio book. Was the brand sold between versions or something?

The five other (air, earth, fire, water, and mixed) geniekin not being in Rage of Elements isn't a licensing issue itself. It's more that Rage of Elements wasn't originally developed as a remaster product, it was converted to a remaster product partway through development. So when it was being scoped and development began, it was going to be published as part of the exact same version of the system where the previous five geniekin existed. So reprinting those 20 pages would've been the option that draws bad reactions. And trying to add 20 pages to the book by the time they knew there was going to be a remaster would've been practically impossible.

[Ravingdork]

agoak wrote:

I'm starting pathfinder with 2e remastered, and it feels like I am being forced to buy legacy products in order to get heritages (or are they ancestries, that wasn't clear either) for the other 4 geniekin that I feel should have been included in rage of the elements.

Just because you feel it should be so doesn't mean it is or should be that way.

You're not being forced to buy anything at all. Thats just not the way Paizo operates. All of the game's rules, all of it, is provided online by Paizo, for free, including your versatile heritages.

And unless your players don't use modern phones and devices, looking them up shouldn't really be much of an issue for them either.

To make it even easier for you though, here is a complete list of all the versatile heritages, including the elemental heritages below:
- Ardande (plant/wood)
- Ifrit (fire)
- Oread (earth)
- Suli (elements)
- Sylph (air)
- Talos (metal)
- Undine (water)

As has been said, you may need to update their Elemental Lore feat to include Additional Lore, but that's it. Everything else matches what already exists in Remaster.

Just have fun! Don't let IRL labels (especially those that exist soley for legal reasons) get in the way of you and your friends enjoying a game of imagination.

[Ajaxius]

I imagine part of the issue is just Paizo not expecting the remaster to be as much of a smash hit as it was.

[BotBrain]

I think the Karen comment is a little unnecessary to someone expressing frustration over what is a confusing situation if you weren't there for it.

OP, others have touched on it but the remaster is as much a balance patch as it was Paizo moving their new publications off the OGL. The problem here is that rage of elements was in the pipeline as the OGL crisis hit, so it got a wording change but there wouldn't have been space to publish any remastered rules. You might also note that elementalist didn't get a reprint alongside the new feats, even though it's also got the same awkward legacy/remaster split that genekin does.

The legacy rules also aren't an "old system", especially outside of classes which were the major changes. The other genekin are all fully compatible out the box, especially as Archives of Nethys does an excellent job of incorporating any errata.

It's best to understand "legacy" as not meaning "This doesn't work anymore" but instead "This may contain references to rules text that has been updated". Fortunately, archives will also link you to the updated version of the referenced rule by default, so your work is minimal. This is why everyone here is so insistant on sending you there instead of the books, because not only is it free and officially sanctioned, but it's really well made.

[Kelseus]

Ajaxius wrote:

I imagine part of the issue is just Paizo not expecting the remaster to be as much of a smash hit as it was.

Paizo was not doing Remaster because they wanted more money. They did remaster because the alternative was spending every dime they had and then some fighting with a multi-billion dollar company over the copyright of the term "magic missiles" and "owlbear."

Ask any of the Paizo employees (or go back and look at their former posts). Paizo would have 100% been happy to stick with OGL. Hasbro forced their hand.

[Perpdepog]

Just as a reminder, particularly if anyone is planning on using geniekin as foes any time soon, ifrit were renamed to naari in the Remaster; ifrit are now what the genies who give rise to naari are called rather than their prior name of efreeti.

[moosher12]

The actual reason is that Rage of Elements is not actually a Remastered book. Wood and Metal geniekin are OGL, not ORC, therefore they are still Legacy ancestries. There are NO remastered geniekin at all. It's an OGL book written with early Remastered writing style in mind, but it is not actually a Remastered book. It only needed two geniekin because the other 5 already existed in OGL. But yeah, none of the Rage of Elements content is ORC, therefore none of the Rage of Elements content is actually Remastered content, until the book either gets reprinted under ORC, or until a newer book publishes content scraped from it. (For example, if I wrote an ORC book, I cannot write material for the Kineticist, because the Kineticist is not a remastered class. I'd instead need to write Kineticist material in an OGL book. Though, because Paizo is 1st party, they can legally write supplemental material for their own OGL books in their own ORC books without needing to port the OGL content to ORC, which is why Impossible Magic includes Kineticist options while Kineticist is still OGL).

But on the bright side, this means that eventually, geniekin will be remastered, and because wood and metal geniekin are legacy, that means there's a good chance all 7 subtypes can be included in the same book when it comes time. It just won't be rage of elements. A direct remaster of an existing book keeps pagination, so there is no way to add the remaining 5 geniekin to that book in the event of such a remaster. It'd either be in a new element-themed book, a new race book to the tune of Galactic Ancestries and Ancestry Guide, a combination of one of the earlier including the remaining 5 geniekin and a remaster of Rage of Elements, and lastly, I have an unlikely hope that because Impossible Magic shows an elemental on its cover, I think a magic themed book would be a good fit to include the geniekin if it includes new ancestry options at all. Either way, Paizo has been doing a good job rolling out Legacy ancestry options with each core and lost omens book, so I'm sure they'll come in time.

[HenshinFanatic]

I'm hoping they'll be in Impossible Magic, because I don't see many other possible places for them to show up organically unless Paizo starts going back to releasing products akin to their old PF1E line of softcovers like Melee Tactics Toolbox, Weapon Master's Handbook, People of the Stars, etc.

[Zoken44]

I was thinking this too, but I hadn't heard anything about it.

[BotBrain]

I'm not holding my breath for them being in impossible magic, it sounds like it's going to be a book really hurting for page count.

[Xenocrat]

They've only ever remastered/converted-to-ORC old products that are necessary to have an independent viable product line should Hasbro follow through on their old threats. Originally this was the bare minimimum of the core books.

Probably Guns and Gears and Dark Archive weren't originally on any longterm plan (and maybe not Monster Core 2), but Paizo's customers had the bad taste to buy enough that they sold out and could support an economically viable reprint with the absolute bare minimum of work to strip out OGL and almost no effort on rules fixes.

As low as I'd expect the future G&G and DA revenue to be, providing the geniekin in a new book is surely going to make even less compared to alternative new material they could be printing.

[moosher12]

Xenocrat wrote:

They've only ever remastered/converted-to-ORC old products that are necessary to have an independent viable product line should Hasbro follow through on their old threats. Originally this was the bare minimimum of the core books.

Probably Guns and Gears and Dark Archive weren't originally on any longterm plan (and maybe not Monster Core 2), but Paizo's customers had the bad taste to buy enough that they sold out and could support an economically viable reprint with the absolute bare minimum of work to strip out OGL and almost no effort on rules fixes.

As low as I'd expect the future G&G and DA revenue to be, providing the geniekin in a new book is surely going to make even less compared to alternative new material they could be printing.

I think there's two reasons we're more likely than not to eventually get geniekin within the next few years:

1. Geniekin are actually pretty popular. Especially since they have the D&D overlap with genasi, so a lot of D&D people come in wanting to be geniekin. We're already confirmed to get fetchlings, strix, and sprites back. So Paizo is certainly remastering Legacy stuff as soon as the appropriate book comes up. I don't think Paizo would plan to sleep on a fan favorite for too long. Something gives me the feeling they'd at least be more popular than fetchlings. But we're still relatively early in the Remaster, to be frank.

2. I don't think page count is gonna be an issue, if anything, the remastered format I think more likely than not is probably gonna compress the geniekin into a single geniekin heritage, as the various outer planes scions (tieflings, aasimars, aphorites, and ganzi) were compressed into Nephilim. Granted, some folks probably would not be fond of this change and the need to use Lineage feats, but with the host of universal geniekin feats, I have a strong feeling that switching to a single "geniekin versatile heritage" that divides the individual subtypes into lineages would be the likely move in a remaster, reducing the heritages to a relatively small page count. Enough to slot into any rulebook that would have ancestries anyway. Though I would not be surprised if they pulled a nephilim, only granted the lineages for the first 5, and then granting the final 2 lineages elsewhere. If we ever got a new Lost Omens Ancestry Core to the tune of Galactic Ancestries, that'd also be a very easy place to just finish off the remaining ancestries in one fell swoop, and have room for some new ones.